


i thought of angels choking on their halos

by cyanica



Series: maybe i just took too much cough medicine [whumptober 2020] [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Abuse, Ahsoka Tano Needs a Hug, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood, Captivity, Dark Anakin Skywalker, Depression, Gen, Horror, Human Disaster Anakin Skywalker, Hurt Ahsoka Tano, Hurt No Comfort, Insanity, Major Character Injury, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Pain, Post-Order 66 (Star Wars), Post-Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suitless Darth Vader, Torture, Whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:34:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26772241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyanica/pseuds/cyanica
Summary: It shouldn’t have been funny. It really, really shouldn’t have made her chuckling whimpers contort into agonising moans of deranged, uncontrollably hysteria – but here Ahsoka Tano was, contemplating the sanity of own mind after the fall of the universe, and choking on her own crazed mania because after a hundred days of within Anakin’s captivity – it had become so fucked up, it was funny.Or things turned out differently.
Relationships: Ahsoka Tano & Darth Vader, Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano
Series: maybe i just took too much cough medicine [whumptober 2020] [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947775
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	i thought of angels choking on their halos

**Author's Note:**

> not sure where i was going with this… i feel like standard whump is straight-up torture with your basic whumpee and whumper, but not sure if that's my thing, so i experimented this fic. it's more internal monologuing than anything and i had no idea of where i was going until i was writing it so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> other than the warnings in the tags, there is an implied major character death (not ahsoka or anakin).
> 
> whumptober prompt day 2: in the hands of the enemy, kidnapped 
> 
> title from ‘just one yesterday’ - fall out boy

The stone of the wall was marred with hundreds of jarred, scarred indentations from her rotted, bloodied fingernails that had broken against the rock seemingly a thousand times over each new broken line was drawn.

It had become more than just a tally upon the wall of her cell, much like she’d seen soldiers cast upon their helmets for each battle, each kill, each dead brother. 

Instead, the wall of a hundred scars, smeared with painted streaks of crimson from her necroding, fraying fingers had become something of art, in its own undeniably insane way.

But the universe had a way with things, and so – as if it were somehow written into the stars the way dying constellations burned into dust around them all – the infinite world of desolation had condemned that light become dark, kindness become corruption, and torture become art. 

If her ribs weren’t so broken with mutilated bone pushing itself into the dying tissue of her drowning lungs and the flesh upon her chest didn't threaten to break from the outside, she would have laughed.

_The end of the world_ , Ahsoka thought from a distant, abstract piece of her fraying mind along with a memory that smelled of water fountains and rosewood perfume, _was inexplicably, inevitably beautiful._

Or perhaps the deception of it all had just rotted everything down to her bone marrow, and Ahsoka could no longer tell between which was a line of life – binding and brilliant in all its ecstatic rapture pulling her away from the burning embers of the universe’s gallows; or between the rope that hung as a boundless noose from around her throat, condemning her lungs to infinitely suffocate upon the remains of the ash that the world that erupted into.

Funny, she had thought Anakin an angel before he fell, too. He was that of the gods – made of gold and stardust and all that were good and kind and pure; but she’d been wrong then, and she was wrong now. 

Because he fell in the way dying stars did, consuming the planets of the world in an indefinite oblivion of nothingness that smelled of rotting bodies and embers of stardust when those constellated supernovas collided into the earth. He was the awakening of ravines of molten lava, the acidic aroma of burning flesh and bone marrow, the shadow that devoured the universe of its eternal flame of purified light, and smothered it with his own flame of disillusioned retribution for the things that were unsalvageable. 

If she hadn’t seen a monster for what he had been then, how was she supposed to now? What was keeping her mind for splintering off into a thousand unfixable smithereens, just as the tissue and organs and bones of her body had fragmented into upon the agonising torture Anakin deemed salvation?

It shouldn’t have been funny. It really, really shouldn’t have made her chuckling whimpers contort into agonising moans of deranged, uncontrollably hysteria – but here Ahsoka Tano was, contemplating the sanity of own mind after the angels fell with the corruption of the universe, and choking on her own crazed mania because after a hundred days of within Anakin’s captivity – it had become so fucked up, it was _funny_.

“Why are you laughing?”

Maybe she should have stopped at that point. The shadow of whatever Anakin Skywalker believed himself to be had loomed into her cell like a godless silhouette against the scarred stone, eyes festering with bloodied crimson and sickening gold, illuminating the dried gore against the walls, against her skin, and stared at her until she was forced to breathe.

He hadn’t changed much, Ahsoka mused, collapsing her head against the grating stone cutting against her back and shoulders like needles. No, he looked the same as he always had – since Mustafar, since Coruscant, since Christophsis – and now _that_ was enough for Ahsoka to feel as if she’d die from the euphoric lunacy. 

While the universe had burned from the ignition of Sidious’s marionette strings lit like a fuse doused in gasoline; while Obi-Wan had burned to insignificant pieces of blackened bone and charred human flesh; while Ahsoka rotted away with necrosis devouring her tissues and rotting her organs now to the marrow –

– Anakin Skywalker got pretty, golden eyes and the power of the gods ruling over the smithereens of the universe.

It was _funny_.

“Everything. This. _You_.” She waved a trembling, blackened hand vaguely within the putrid-smelling air of rotting flesh, and gestured towards the shape of his shadow against the tally wall. “I’ve scarred a line in that wall for a hundred days now, so much so that my fingernails have ripped off and are bleeding black with infection…” Ahsoka paused, tracing the earlier marks from when she’d still felt the pain in her hands. 

“But I just realised,” she continued, intoxicated by the simmering mania residing like something evil within the essence of her soul. “That fucking wall is somehow a masterpiece. Why the fuck do I think that? I should hate it, and I used to, but now it’s like it’s _changed_.” She giggled, turning back to Anakin’s silhouette that framed the doorway, and smiled at him. “Gods, now I’m as insane as you.”

“You’re here for your own protection.” He said simply, and the way his voice was completely and entirely steady, defying against insanity in every way possible, and as devout as the clones' hands had been once they’d pulled the trigger – Ahsoka was sure Anakin’s words in his own corrupted mind were gospel.

And yet –

She’d used to scream at that. She’d used to tear her vocal cords apart into matted, mutilated ribbons that had her vomiting up blood until she was the colour of bone that tore through her flesh as her body trashed against his hold –

But now, the most she could offer him was a soft, breathless laugh that could have sounded genuine if the person listening to it had their eardrums exploded from their head. “My protection,” Ahsoka echoed, nodding to herself and smiling because maybe everything truly _was_ funny. “No offence, but I’m one tally mark away from dead.”

Anakin moved like a serpent within the darkness, constricting the oxygen within the room until it became unbreathable, and stood where his shadow engulfed her form from the corner against the wall. “You need to be protected from him.”

_Right_. _Him_. Anakin had never clarified who it was, but Ahsoka had always been one to put the pieces of Anakin Skywalker back together like paper and twine, and she’d known who _‘he’_ was without him ever saying so. 

Perhaps that was funny too – even after the end of all things, Ahsoka could still read Anakin like a book, after he’d decided to rain genocidic polarisation down upon them all. Stitching up his apprentice after the battle had become mutilating her flesh with metallic knives and the burn of his crimson ‘saber; or midnight desert folklore between a master and a sleepless padawan had become eternal screams as she’d trashed against the stone to defy against his unstoppable hold; or forehead kisses after the heat of a nightmare had become an agonisingly familiar monster peering down upon her as she refused to succumb into the darkness the way he had before her.

Because ‘him’ was Anakin Skywalker either way, and maybe Anakin was able to fool himself, pretend to be something other than what he'd become – but Ahsoka couldn’t do the same. He’d always be her master, her brother, a traitor, a murderer, a Sith – evil.

“Whatever you tell yourself, Anakin,” Ahsoka said, the words coming out as a whispered breath of deranged air from her lungs, but even so they were sharp and bitter like the dried blood cracking against her lips. She could _taste_ the rot as if her body had become it.

“He wants you to join him. You will be safe.” 

Those words were familiar, at least. Then the scars on the wall were fresh, when the tallies weren’t as high nor as bloodied as they would become, Ahsoka would once again scream herself raw at the proposition. She’d upheld the illusion of dignity, of strength then, and rebelled against his temptations of the dark as if she’d still been the snippy, young padawan – all defiance and purity as she held her ground like she’d had any reason to. 

But Ahsoka was not who she had been. She'd become something far more damned than she’d thought she’d ever become, and therefore had inevitably, been consumed by a different kind of darkness, so very far from the naive girl she’d been at the start – willing to turn her master back.

But that was then – that Ahsoka had been foolish to think Anakin Skywalker or herself weren’t completely dead – and this was the _now_ where she knew better; where she had existed for far too long after the fall of the stars and their angels, and now all she wanted was to lay her head back against the stone tallied wall and go to sleep. 

“You know my answer, Anakin,” Ahsoka said, closing her eyes against the vermilion illumination that burned a stark bloodied red against the cell’s darkened interior. 

“He wants you to be safe,” the illusion of her long-dead master said, his shadow slowly engulfing the scars against the wall as the ignited blade drowned away the blackness. 

The heat was a pyre against her skin, an ironic relic of the past to mock how honourable Jedi had ascended into the cosmic wavelength – how Obi-Wan had burned in tongues of fire within a river of hellish magma. 

_Honourable. Ahsoka. Obi-Wan. Anakin. The Jedi. The universe._

That thought was really funny. 

Ahsoka laughed as Anakin burned the scarlet blade against her flaying flesh, up until it boiled a putrid black, decaying off her rotting, skinless body that smelled of fire and ash. 

She laughed and laughed and laughed and didn’t stop.


End file.
